About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Friday, April 14, 2017

Saudi coalition poised to take Yemen's most important port, famine is looming

The Internationale Crisis Group (ICG) reports: Yemenis are starving because of war. No
natural disaster is responsible. No amount of humanitarian aid can solve
the underlying problem. Without an immediate, significant course
change, portions of the country, in the 21st century and under the
watch of the Security Council, will likely tip into famine. (NB this is a slightly abridged version of the ICG report)

By numbers, Yemen is suffering from the largest food crisis in the world.According
to the UN, an estimated seventeen million persons, 60 per cent of the
population and three million more than were so afflicted at the start of
the year, are food insecure and require urgent humanitarian assistance
to save lives. Seven of the country’s 22 governorates are at a phase
four emergency food insecurity level, one step away from phase five:
famine. Areas affected include both government and Huthi/Saleh
controlled governorates. UNICEF reports that 460,000 children suffer
from severe acute malnutrition.
Saudi-led coalition allies repeatedly have hindered the movement of aid
and commercial goods to the population. Huthi/Saleh violations are most
egregious in the city of Taiz, where their fighters have enforced a full
or partial blockade since 2015, with devastating humanitarian
consequences. They routinely interfere with the work of humanitarians,
at times demanding the diversion of aid to themselves or denying aid
workers access to populations in need, revoking visas or even detaining
them.They
heavily tax all imports into their areas in part to finance the war
effort and also run a black market in fuel, enriching military elites
while driving prices up for trans­port of vital commodities.
The Saudi-led coalition has strangled the flow of commodities into the
country’s largest and most important port, Hodeida, which is under
Huthi/Saleh control. Yemen is over 90 per cent dependent on imports for
staple commodities such as wheat and rice; the UN estimates that 80 per
cent of all imports for the north currently pass through Hodeida.Under
the cover of UN Security Council Resolution 2216 (April 2015), which
called for an arms embargo against Huthi/Saleh forces, the Saudi-led
coalition aggressively imposed a naval blockade for the first year of
the war. Three months after their military intervention, only 15 per
cent of pre-war imports were entering the country, prompting UN
humanitarian agencies to issue initial famine warnings. Following
bureaucratic delays on the part of the Security Council, the coalition
and the Yemeni government, the problem was partially resolved in May
2016 through a UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) that led
to an easing of restrictions, but by then coalition airstrikes had
already damaged the port’s throughput capacity, contributing to long
queues and delays.
The situation is about to become much worse, as the coalition appears
determined to break a military stalemate that has largely held since
September 2015 by attempting to capture the Red Sea coast, including
Hodeida. It says that taking the port is necessary to stem the flow of
weapons to Huthi/Saleh fighters and to bring them to the bargaining
table. This reasoning is questionable, since the Saudi-backed Hadi
government, not the Huthi/Saleh bloc, officially rejected the latest
peace initiative of the UN special envoy, and the coalition’s navy and
the UNVIM already monitor, albeit not perfectly, the port.
The more acute current problem, however, is on the demand side.
Notwithstanding mounting challenges, food is still widely available in
the markets, including Sanaa. Yet, Yemenis throughout the country
increasingly are unable to purchase it. A critical component of the purchasing power crisis is the inability of
the central bank to consistently pay public-sector salaries since August
2016. This is a product of shrinking state finances, an acute liquidity
crisis and the bank’s inability to move financial resources between
areas controlled by conflict parties. The issue has become deeply
politicised. Prior to President Hadi’s 19 September decision to move the
central bank from Sanaa to Aden, there had been a tacit agreement
between the warring sides to allow the institution to function
relatively free of interference. Diplomats and economists widely agreed
that the bank had remained largely impartial, facilitating the import of
an increasingly limited list of basic commodities, protecting the value
of the riyal and paying public-sector salaries nationally under
increasingly difficult economic circumstances. But this did not last.
Without revenues from hydrocarbons, which accounted for approximately
half the government’s budget in 2014, or donor support, both solvency
and immediate liquidity came under immense strain.
By moving the bank, the government argued, it could prevent the
Huthi/Saleh bloc from using central bank funds for its war effort, while
allowing the bank to dispense public-sector salaries nationally and
stabilise the economy. The bank in Aden has printed much-needed currency
to address the liquidity crisis (a move that was blocked by the Hadi
government when the bank was in Sanaa); at least 160 billion Yemeni
riyals (approximately $640 million) have been delivered to Aden as part
of a 400-billion riyal ($1.6 billion) order from a printing company in
Russia.However,
there is little transparency as to how the money has been disbursed.
Moreover, since the relocation, some salaries have been paid in the
south but far fewer in the north, and the banking system has all but
collapsed, putting additional pressures on the supply side, as commodity
importers can no longer access letters of credit.
More worrying yet, the government has not received a much-needed
injection of foreign currency Hadi supporters expected would come from
Gulf backers once the bank moved. The small amount of domestic revenue
that is generated is not being deposited in central bank accounts, as
the country’s various administrative centres are acting autonomously.
Neither Huthi/Saleh-controlled territories nor Marib governorate, which
is technically controlled by the Hadi government and is the main
producer of oil and gas for Yemeni consumption, are making revenues
available to the central bank in Aden. The Hadi government is also not
depositing oil export revenues from the Masila basin in Hadramout, which
came back online in August 2016, and is instead using an external
account in Saudi Arabia with no oversight of expenditures.In the absence of access to foreign exchange, pumping additional riyals into the market would create inflationary pressures.

Addressing the looming famine is a complex challenge that requires
immediate action to prevent a worsening of the situation and to deliver
lifesaving assistance to those most in need. Yemenis are set to starve
as a result of the financial consequences of the war, but this trend can
still be arrested and even reversed if political actors choose to do
so. The following steps are urgent:

The Saudi-led coalition should halt plans to invade the port of Hodeida.

The Huthi/Saleh authorities, the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led
coalition should work with the UN envoy to reach a deal that allows
technocrats in the central bank in Aden and Sanaa to devise a plan for
the resumption of public-sector salaries nationally,
disbursement of social-welfare cash transfers to the poorest Yemenis
and performance of basic banking functions free of political
interference until a comprehensive political settlement is reached.

To be successful, these stopgap measures ultimately must be supplemented
and supported by a ceasefire and peace agreement that allow Yemenis the
chance to rebuild state institutions and the economy.

To be successful, these stopgap measures ultimately must be supplemented
and supported by a ceasefire and peace agreement that allow Yemenis the
chance to rebuild state institutions and the economy.